Long ago, on New York City’s docks, Frankie drilled into me the American credo about climbing the ladder to a better life. “Kid, you gotta finish college,” he would say. “You gotta do better than this. All you need is to work harder and you can get there.” Frankie, a massive fellow who had spent …
Don’t Count on Tomorrow: The New Credo for the Unemployed Read More »
Last week, NBC launched a new show that tries to find comedy in the all-too-real conditions of outsourcing. While the first episode was witty—making light of age-old cultural clashes and stereotypes, there is nothing funny about the reality of outsourcing and the impact it has both on the American worker and their counterparts around the world. For …
With news that jobless claims are up, Dean Baker points out that “employers are already hiring more than 4 million workers a month. The problem is that roughly 4 million workers a month are also leaving their jobs, half voluntarily and half involuntarily.” So while it’s important to reduce jobless claims, the unemployment rate would …
With unemployment so high and middle class job prospects so low, this Labor Day is overcast by gloom. We can surrender to it. We can rant with Glenn Beck and kick the dog. Alternatively, we can join with our neighbors, employed and unemployed, our foreclosed-on children, our elderly parents and together create a grassroots groundswell that gives government no choice but to respond to our needs, the needs of working people.
Too often when economic times get tough, scapegoats are found in the wrong places. Wall Street greed and double-dealing sparked much of the nation’s recent near-financial collapse, yet many in the chattering classes instead are attacking public employees for this rolling recession. Economist Dean Baker puts the situation in perspective: Fifteen million people are not out of …
Sure, times are tough. One of the most interesting discussions I’ve ever read about surviving tough times comes from a book called, “The Lessons of Experience: How successful executives develop on the job” by McCall, Lombardo and Morrison (Lexington Books, 1988). The book was a result of extensive interviews with executives on many topics. The …
Lately, there has been a fair amount of buzz in the economics blogosphere about the issue that I’ve been discussing here: Structural Unemployment. Paul Krugman touches on it here. Brad DeLong says this. Mark Thoma has a post in a forum focusing on structural unemployment at The Economist. If you read through these posts, however, …
Amid the anger among progressives over White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’ attack on the”professional left,” a leading cause of the wide-ranging disenchantment with President Obama that threatens Democrats in November remains untouched: long-term joblessness. The new, scaled-down legislation signed by Obama yesterday to save teachers’ jobs and help states pay for Medicaid won’t help the nearly 30 million …
As Netroots Rage at Gibbs, Long-Term Jobless Left Behind Read More »
Left to itself, the U.S. economy may not return to its pre-recession rate of unemployment until 2021, says a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Even under the more optimistic growth assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve got five more years of high unemployment coming, as CEPR notes. If that’s …
A Decade of High Unemployment & Falling Wages… Or We Could Create Jobs & Help our Cities Read More »
I am unemployed, and have been now for a little more than three months. People like me often say “I lost my job” — as if their situation were the result of some personal failing or act of stupidity. Like “I lost my car keys” or “I lost my wallet.” No. Let me say, instead: …
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
